al-Mardawi

'Ala' al-Din 'Ali ibn Sulayman al-Mardawi was a jurist (faqih) of the Hanbali madhhab — one of the four Sunni schools of Islamic law, the one tracing itself to Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Biographical sources report that he was born in 817 AH (1414 CE) in Marda, a village in the Nablus region of Palestine, where he memorized the Qur'an and first studied law. As a grown man he moved to Damascus (around 838 AH), settling in its Salihiyya quarter, a long-established centre of Hanbali learning at the foot of Mount Qasiyun. There he studied under leading Hanbalis — notably Taqi al-Din ibn Qundus — and went on to teach, issue legal opinions (fatwas), and serve as a deputy judge.

Al-Mardawi's lasting fame rests on his work of tahqiq ("verification") — the careful weighing of conflicting views inside the school to determine which opinion is the rajih, the better-supported one. His best-known book, al-Insaf, does this for al-Muqni', a legal manual by the earlier Hanbali authority Ibn Qudama; he also wrote Tashih al-Furu' and a commentary on legal theory (usul al-fiqh). Later Hanbalis credit these works with helping settle the school's authoritative positions, and some honour him with titles such as "shaykh of the madhhab." Sources report that he died in Damascus in 885 AH (1480 CE) and was buried near Mount Qasiyun.